


All of the Ghouls Come Out to Play

by EmiAliceinWonderland



Category: Glee
Genre: Angst, Community: glee_angst_meme, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-08
Updated: 2016-08-08
Packaged: 2018-08-07 12:00:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7714120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmiAliceinWonderland/pseuds/EmiAliceinWonderland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.”<br/>— 	“The Five People You Meet In Heaven” by Mitch Albom</p>
            </blockquote>





	All of the Ghouls Come Out to Play

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a long time ago, I think I was about 15, and going through a very angsty phase and got most of it out by self-inserting into my darling Blaine Anderson. I was convinced from the moment he was introduced that he had a lot of hidden secrets, and family issues etc. and then in Season 6 it was confirmed his parents had divorced, so this actually could fit into canon, even though it was just a headcanon when I wrote it. I have more of this written, so if people want more I may post it? But for now, enjoy tiny Blaine dealing with his childhood - my aim is that it may explain some of the behaviours and problems we see him deal with when we meet him as a teenager. Oh, and the title is from "Shake if Out" by Florence & The Machine. :)

_That’s the thing about pain, it demands to be felt._ ~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars  
  
Blaine is seven and his parent’s are arguing again. He can hear Mama’s high heels snapping against the shiny marble floor tiles in the kitchen that Blaine and Cooper like to slide across in their socks, and he imagines her pacing around the wooden island in the centre of the room, arms crossed, lips pursed, rolling her eyes as she pretends to listen to her husband’s grumblings.

There’s a lull every now and then in the practiced _grumble-snap!-grumble-snap!_ and silence hangs heavy in the tension charged air for a moment, the conflict slowly building like a storm as whispered accusations snake their way through the quiet, still house and up to the top of the staircase where Blaine sits, waiting for the thunder and lightning. (It’s not that he enjoys hearing the horrible things his mama and daddy say to each other, but he’s tried to ignore it before and he knows it’s impossible to just crawl back into bed and block out the shouting, so he stays: silent and unmoving, perched on the very top step, ready to run back down the hallway and pretend to be asleep if they come to check on him.)

 _Crash!_ Blaine flinches. He holds his breath and imagines Cooper sitting next to him, holding his hand and whisper-singing - _here is a little song I wrote; you might want to sing it note for note_ \- over the sounds of Mama and Daddy’s yelling. But Cooper’s not here this time, he’s out with his friends from school and Blaine knows he had no way of predicting that their parents would fight again tonight but still, he can’t help but feel just a little like his brother’s abandoned him. (Blaine’s found himself left alone more and more lately and he wonders if one day Cooper will just disappear altogether. He really hopes he won’t.) _‘Don’t worry, be happy’_ imaginary Cooper sings in Blaine’s head at the same as he hears the dull slam-smash-shout that he knew was - but hoped wasn’t - coming.

"You’re a fucking lunatic!" Mr Anderson bellows and Blaine traces the olive green wallpaper next to him with his fingertips while his mother’s voice carries through the house, hysteric and throaty with tears – ‘Oh, and you’re not, John!?’

Blaine stills his tracings of the patterned wall and wonders for a second if his dad really is a lunatic or if Mama is or if they both are... but then he realises that he doesn’t even really know what the word means. Cooper would know - if he was here; Cooper knows everything Blaine doesn’t.

There’s silence again now and Blaine hates it – the way he has no way of knowing what’s going on, he just has to wait and wait and wait. He doesn’t know if his mama will have a bruise on her face in the morning or if Daddy won’t come home again for a week, or if Cooper will have to go down to the shops and buy some more plates because too many have been smashed.

Downstairs Daddy says, "Get away from me! You’re crazy!"

"Oh shut up, you stupid, idiotic coward!" Mama screams back. Blaine hears glass shattering, his dad yelling unintelligibly and chairs falling, plates shattering, doors slamming, noise, noise, noise vibrating through the walls and up the stairs. He squeezes his eyes tight shut, presses his little hands over his ears and bunches his knees up to his chest, rocking back and forth to the music in his head instead of the fighting.

_‘In every life you have some trouble, when you worry you make it double.’_

It’s been like this for as long as Blaine can remember but somehow that doesn’t make it any more bearable; you can be used to something but still hate it with everything you are, and he thinks, in the spaces between the shouting, that maybe he hates this house that way.

***  
At 12.56am the front door slams shut and the silence that follows makes it final. After what feels like hours and hours of waiting on the top step for his parents to stop fighting Blaine stumbles with tired limbs and stinging eyes to his bedroom, collapsing onto his mattress and finally giving in to the sleep that’s been threatening to take hold of him all night.

(And in the hazy state where you’re barely on the edge of consciousness, he hears his mama’s high heels _snap- snap- snap_ up the stairs and he knows that Daddy’s gone tonight, that the front door slammed and isn’t going to be opened again for a while.)

Blaine falls asleep to remembered singing in his head.

_‘Don't worry, it will soon pass, whatever it is, don't worry, be happy.’_

 


End file.
